JAN MOIR: Bye Ken, the world always seemed safer with you on the airwaves.

Ken Bruce said goodbye to BBC Radio 2 today, slipping from his moorings as smoothly as a teak schooner sailing across a mill pond.

Some insiders were expecting a difficult and emotional time on his latest show, after 31 years of flawless service hosting the mid-morning show. Yet Bruce was professional to the very end, steering his ship across the river of no return with a steady hand on the tiller and a manly lack of tears or recrimination.

He shrugged off compliments, avoided emotional goodbyes, stuck to lunchtime pipes; moving neatly from the Popmaster contest to ‘some lovely sounds from The Alan Parsons Project’ and then to the last link and final farewell to him. “A lot of people would say, write a great speech and deliver it, but that’s not the kind of thing I do,” he told his listeners, before thanking his colleagues and signing off for good.

At the beginning of the show, he urged everyone not to read too much into his song choices for the day. There were no ‘hidden agendas,’ she insisted. They’re just good songs. Enjoy!’ Was that completely true? Indeed, how does it feel? from Slade. it contains pointed verses about being ‘wrecked…with new frustrations’, but it’s long been one of Bruce’s favorite tracks, so there’s no shade there. More poignant was the inclusion of Charlie Dore’s 1979 classic Pilot of the Airwaves. “I’ve been listening to your show on the radio,” he sings, “and you seem like a friend to me.”

Surely that’s how it must seem to Bruce’s loyal nine million listeners, dedicated to the end to a man who makes difficult, under-pressure broadcast work sound effortless. Perhaps part of his success is that the world always seemed a safer place if Ken was on the radio, his father’s soft voice a calm, reassuring presence in the tumult of the day.

‘Oh thank you,’ he was saying forcefully this morning, accepting the well wishes of guests who called in on the phone. “That’s very, very nice Paul, thank you,” she’d say, after another listener professed her gratitude. She read a message from a woman in Kent, who said that Ken was her radio husband because ‘I always half listen and when I come back you’re still talking’.

There was ‘the traditional thirty seconds of silence’ after the final Popmaster, along with more thanks from the participants and colleagues.

There was a lot of creaking as he opened a going-away present from Richie from travel news, what more than a framed photograph along with a bag of Radio 2 goodies.

And a lovely card, thank you very much indeed! I’m going to miss you all,” Ken said.

There was cheers from Rob Brydon and his Radio 2 colleague Jeremy Vine, who kept trying to tell Bruce that he was simply the best.

“We Scots, particularly Glaswegians, don’t take praise,” he said, brushing it aside before moving on to a pretty song by Petula Clark.

The 72-year-old has been with the BBC since 1977, when he started out as a presenter on Radio Scotland. Somehow, he’s been let slip and on April 3rd, Bruce enters the world of commercial broadcasting with a new mid-morning show on Greatest Hits Radio.

It’s no secret that he hoped to settle his notice by the end of March, but the BBC took it off the airwaves two weeks earlier. Because? Perhaps they were simply embarrassed by his continued strong, entertaining, and much-loved presence at the center of his broadcast show. Because just by being there every morning, Bruce was a painful reminder of how much they were about to lose through carelessness. Yet after such loyal service, seeing his last month cut short must have stung.

“Seems like a shame,” Bruce said softly on the Today show this morning. God knows what he must really feel, or what emotion stirs under those carefully forgiving words. He added that he had wanted to work on his behalf and that in 46 years of service at the BBC, “I’ve never had much free time.”

I think we understand the gist. You’d think after all this time they’d be grateful, but it’s too late for that now. Goodbye Ken. See you on the other side.